Running hatred and 3 other auras with BM leaves me with over 1k life reserved. My current kill speed is pretty good but I have 3k effective life so seriously considering getting alot more life rather than more DPS.

Build Strengths:
- Fast kill speed
- Good amount of life
- Can stack both physical and elemental damage making it very flexible to gear
- Extreme amount of leech
- Can be very tanky

Build Weaknesses:
- Centered around a very rare and expensive unique bow (Lioneye's Glare)
- Low survivibility and DPS in cruel/early merci. Grows expontially in end game though
- Uses 4 (possibly 5) uniques so unlike normal elemental builds jewelry will generally have to have life res, not much room to stack ele damage.

with the large amount of leech and regen I don't really have much issue with small amounts of damage over time. So I want instant life for those shield chargers and I want mobility so I keep in combat (with blood rage using all my regen I need leech to keep me alive), get out of bad spots and quickly reposition against fast moving mobs.

Bandits:
Normal = Help Oak
Crual = Kill All
Merc = Kill All

Let me do a little breakdown here now that I have all the stats spelled out. Basically the goal is to take the highest physical damage bow in the game then convert the physical damage into elemental. I get bonuses from all flat physical or elemental on gear, all increased physical or elemental damage leaving me with many options to what I can wear in my non-unique spots.

The build is nothing really special (ice crit), but it provides ton of fun and work really early on (so it is not one of those build where you have to 'grind' 40+ lvls before it really starts) and i have to admit that i was impressed by the strenght achieved even after only finishing normal (i haven't copied any build and just took the nodes which seemed quite logical for the build at the time, so i didn't expect it to work that great with my first try (during closed beta i leveled a lot of melee and ranged chars but no real spell caster...) and it is also my highest lvl char in open beta and thus he only gets items which are found on the way, so there were no ultra good rares in my stash for him).

It is not yet on the high levels, but the numbers are still quite impressive (at least for me) - i have 28% crit chance on my freezing pulse and over 200 DPS on it with LMP + added cold + faster projectiles (and IIRC FP projectiles can overlap and ideally all 3 can hit one target so that would make 600 DPS in such a situation).
If i want to stay at a bigger range (e.g. against some big caster groups in the 3rd act) i also have a Ice spear + fork + elemental profileration (if i have to stay at range against a single powerfull mob i usually take out the fork gem). It has 32% crit chance in its first form...
For additional damage i use the Frostbite curse.
For more survivability i have Raise zombies (meat shields are always usefull) and Frost wall

I currently use clarity and discipline, which do reserve a lot of mana but thanks to a quite good mana regen (i thinks it is 26 mana per second with clarity) the low amount of mana is not quite a problem (i can push out 5 frezing pulses for a decent burst damage before i run out and after 4-5 seconds i at full mana again, if the situation needs more damage i have 2 mana flasks ready to keep up my spells...)

My current build: Link
My life is 780 and i have 289 ES.
My current equipment:

Spoiler

(all random drops, only the amulet was crrafted with a few alterations. The life leech gem will be later used with FP when my equipment will allow it. The pieces i value the most are definatly the shield and the dagger)

The build i plan to achieve(yes it'll need some of the respec points i'll get during the game): Link 2 (yes it is a CI build despit not having any gear for it ready, i just want to try it if i can make it... And i take the str nodes for any str based support gems i might use (or for some active skills, Enduring cry would be great for additional defense))

EDIT: why did i prefare the shadow istead of the with for such a build? Becasue the early and mid game seems easier with the shadow - he can easily pick up dex and str without going (far) off his way and he can get them rather early, which allows him to use nearly any equipment, which than allowed me to stack much life from my gear only with his random drops (since almost any armor piece that drops can be used and thus allowing me to freely choose which mods i need the most - i used whatever gave me the most life and resits)

This character is currently level 72 in HC. His gear and links aren't optimized yet unlike my previous dagger shadow but he still manages to get the basic idea across.

What makes him special
1. This old man has balls. He uses RF in HC!
2. This old man is no one trick pony. Unlike previous RF builds that have used RF as a primary DPS skill, this old man prefers to use it the way it should be used, a ridiculously powerful buff!

Idea of the build
Basic idea of this build is to use Righteous Fire as a spell damage buff, and to attempt to sustain it for as long as possible by slowing down/reversing the degen associated with RF's DoT. This is done by stacking up on HP (but not too much), HP regen, ES and maxing out Fire Resists using Elemental Adaptation, Saffell's Frame, Purity and Ruby Flasks when need be.

RF is currently still able to do damage as some of my Ar/ES gear is still lacking in terms of ES. Purity is also not maxed out and is currently only at level 17, else my resists would be able to hit 90% and prevent RF from dealing damage. Also looking forward to leveling up to 78 so that I can take 5x8% ES nodes and increase my max ES to a point where my ES regen will hopefully be able to out-regen RF's DoT.

Skils Used
All DPS skills are linked with Iron Will to provide an additional spell damage bonus to be further buffed by RF.

Freezing Pulse for single-target DPS if solo farming
Fire Storm for single-target/AoE DPS party/map farming
Molten Shell for protection as well as to do insane burst damage.
Ice Nova for AoE if solo-farming. Combination of both Molten Shell and Ice Nova is pretty lethal.
Enduring Cry to gain Endurance Charges (6 is the limit)
Elemental Weakness is the curse of choice.
Righteous Fire for spell buff.

DroppingLoads, the anti-CI Righteous Fire Templar. This character is able to sustain Righteous Fire and low-life for massive damage bonuses in exchange for being 1-shot by chaos attacks. ;)

Main Ideas

- Righteous Fire does damage to your character at 100% of your life per second. Therefore, having a low life pool will result in low damage - even less with 75% Fire Resistance. I currently have about 500 life at level 55, so I'm taking a bit less than 125 damage per second.

- Using Zealot's Oath allows the character to regenerate ES instead of life, so having high enough ES and sufficient life regeneration will result in no damage taken from Righteous Fire. I currently have about 9% regeneration - 10.7% when I'm done - so cut off for taking RF damage is about 1650 ES. Anything after that acts as regeneration for my ES pool.

- 9%, 10.7% regen? WTF? I take a massive penalty to my overall ES with Springleaf Unique Shield, but just look at that life regeneration. OOOOOOH BABY.

- Doesn't that mean that you have to be at low-life? Yes it does! I intentionally use Blood Magic and Reduced Mana in conjuction with Vitality to reserve 66% of my health pool, thus putting me in a state of constant low-life. This effect allows me to use the over-powered low-life effects from other items as well. (Once I reach end-game I will probably use a wand).

- Being at constant low-life lets me exploit Pain Attunement, which I think nobody takes. This keystone with Righteous Fire gives me 160%*130% = 208% (108% MORE) damage than I would otherwise deal. Thus the name "DroppingLoads". I do a shit-load of damage for my level.

My main attack is an 11% Freezing Pulse linked with Faster Casting, Faster Projectiles and Lesser Multiple Projectiles. Once I get a 5L Chest, I'll add Cold Penetration.

Each pulse is almost 1300 DPS and so overlapping they do about 3.9k DPS. At level 53 I was 1-shotting packs of mobs in Fellshrine (sp?). The monster level is 59 there.

Caveats

- Obviously this build is a quivering pussy willow when it comes to chaos damage - thus 'anti-CI'. Snakes? Fuck you snakes, I'm dead. Western Forest is actually extremely annoying because the archers shoot poison arrow. I haven't yet figured out how to get around this, but I'll probably eventually get an arc totem or something.

- How do I heal myself? It's really interesting, because Ruby Flasks are essentially health potions for this build. The +10% max fire resist causes RF to have a lesser effect on my regeneration, and so my life increases faster.

- My one health pot has the Dousing mod, which dispels burning and turns off RF. This is EXTREMELY helpful because when I hit low-ES, I just shut off RF and my ES goes up like crazy - I'm pretty much invincible.

This character is currently level 72 in HC. His gear and links aren't optimized yet unlike my previous dagger shadow but he still manages to get the basic idea across.

What makes him special
1. This old man has balls. He uses RF in HC!
2. This old man is no one trick pony. Unlike previous RF builds that have used RF as a primary DPS skill, this old man prefers to use it the way it should be used, a ridiculously powerful buff!

Idea of the build
Basic idea of this build is to use Righteous Fire as a spell damage buff, and to attempt to sustain it for as long as possible by slowing down/reversing the degen associated with RF's DoT. This is done by stacking up on HP (but not too much), HP regen, ES and maxing out Fire Resists using Elemental Adaptation, Saffell's Frame, Purity and Ruby Flasks when need be.

RF is currently still able to do damage as some of my Ar/ES gear is still lacking in terms of ES. Purity is also not maxed out and is currently only at level 17, else my resists would be able to hit 90% and prevent RF from dealing damage. Also looking forward to leveling up to 78 so that I can take 5x8% ES nodes and increase my max ES to a point where my ES regen will hopefully be able to out-regen RF's DoT.

Skils Used
All DPS skills are linked with Iron Will to provide an additional spell damage bonus to be further buffed by RF.

Freezing Pulse for single-target DPS if solo farming
Fire Storm for single-target/AoE DPS party/map farming
Molten Shell for protection as well as to do insane burst damage.
Ice Nova for AoE if solo-farming. Combination of both Molten Shell and Ice Nova is pretty lethal.
Enduring Cry to gain Endurance Charges (6 is the limit)
Elemental Weakness is the curse of choice.
Righteous Fire for spell buff.

Once upon a time, I realized that Infernal Blow is really all Fire damage. Then I realized Burning Arrow with a Blackgleam is also mainly Fire damage. Putting the two together, if I just invest all my points into the plethora of Fire damage that a Templar can reach, then I can have a character using a two-hander and a bow at equal potential!

The character is still under construction but the basis is there. I'm aiming to use both skills as both single-target and AoE spells, using Infernal Blow's detonation damage and Burning Arrow's high Ignite chance (boosted by the CtI gem) along with Proliferation. Throughout most of Cruel I've been one-shotting most mobs with IB, only swapping to the bow for the more annoying mobs, rares and bosses. The AoE potential is further boosted by Molten Shell which obviously synergizes with armor, being melee, and boosted fire damage.

Most builds are either full range, sacrificing potential damage, or full melee, vulnerable to anti-melee mobs. My build has the best of both worlds, and so far I can only identify one significant drawback to the build:

If I socket my IB/BA gems in my axe/bow, I miss out on a skill slot because the M1 ability always resets to Default Attack when swapping weapons! >:|
For the love of my build, Chris, make the game store two different skill setups for your two weapon swaps.